Claim
Reformer's claim is that merit pay will achieve improvement. They believe that American public education is failing because of its teachers and that the wrong types of people have entered the education field who are under qualified. They believe that if teachers had a chance to earn pay based on perfomance, it would solve this "teacher-quality" problem. The reformers believe that with financial incentive, the teachers will work harder to make sure their students are getting the recognizable and praise-able grades so that they can keep that extra sum of money they were offered. Ravitch claims that reformers want education to become more like business, governed by the same principles of competition, with compensation tied to results. She claims that merit pay has never improved achievement and proves this with a number of different claims.
Ravitch's evidence
Ravitch claims that teachers do not like the idea of non-educators (most reformers) redesigning the rules of their workplace. Teachers do not like merit pay because it destroys a healthy and collaborative school environment. Government programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top directly target teachers as the reason for student's failure. They also offer incentives to fire teachers whose students have lower test scores. In the 1980s, Richard Murnane and David Cohen surveyed the history of merit pay. In the few towns that had offered merit pay from 1918 to 1945, the interest in merit pay vastly declined and by 1953 only 4% of cities with a population over 30,000 offered merit pay. They also looked into piece-rate compensation, which also doesn't benefit the teacher or student. It encourages teachers to spend more time with students who will respond to their coaching and less to those who won't. Another issue that was found was that teachers would ignore subjects that were not being tested. The curriculum was being narrowed and the student's overall education experience was dwindling. Many other issues arise with merit pay according to Ravitch. Many teachers who received low scores responded by working less harder as opposed to working harder. Another issue was honest distribution of merit pay. Were principles handing out merit pay to their favorites? or to the teachers that actually deserved it? Overall merit pay is demoralizing, and cannot reasonably be administered fairly. Merit pay does not motivate teachers in Ravitch's investigation, instead it caused resentment and dissension among teachers who did not get merit pay. It is not associated with student performance. Ravitch says, "the paradox of merit pay in education is that even if it did work, it would still fail . The more that teachers and schools are compelled to focus on raising test scores, the more likely they are to narrow the curriculum; the more likely that districts and schools will game the system to inflate scores; the more likely that there will be cheating; the more likely that teachers will seek to avoid low scoring students".
Notes
-education as a business
-promotes competition and compensation results from that competition
-unions are a threat to this idea
-teachers don't like merit pay, it is degrading and demoralizing for them (discouraging)
-destroys the balance they strive for in a school, intertwined curriculum, collab.
-Murnane/Cohen research in 1980s
-no solution to problem of how to motivate teachers
-piece rate compensation---> only focuses on kids who will succeed, manufactures jobs NOT education
-narrows curriculum so only subjects that are being tested are taught or focused on
-Old style merit pay: fairness of merit...are principles being honest about distributing bonuses?
-found that teachers try less hard when rated poorly or do not receive merit pay
-Merit pay is not motivating, they work as hard as they can. they don't need an incentive to be motivated. wrong identification of problem
-government programs encourage incentives
-overall merit pay had no effect on students (the most important part of the issue)
Why important for RIDE?
The sole importance of school and academia is the student and his/her success. If teachers are competing for money, narrowing the curriculum, and ultimately focusing on themselves, it seems as if the child is losing in more ways than one. They have a distracted teacher who wants to win, they are missing out on valuable knowledge because their teacher wants them to score better on specific subject areas, the school environment becomes extremely stressful for teacher and student now that there are high stakes involved. There is no way that merit pay can be a part of the Rhode Island Strategic Plan. With multiple cases failed, it seems like it would be a joke for anyone to ever propose merit pay in communities that are large, fast paced, and always changing. This chapter promotes the idea that merit pay cannot be a part of any states education plan. It offers no benefit to the student or teacher, the two most important parts of the educational system. If the student receives more negatives than positive benefits, why is it relentlessly being proposed in school districts?
Claim
Reformer's claim is that merit pay will achieve improvement. They believe that American public education is failing because of its teachers and that the wrong types of people have entered the education field who are under qualified. They believe that if teachers had a chance to earn pay based on perfomance, it would solve this "teacher-quality" problem. The reformers believe that with financial incentive, the teachers will work harder to make sure their students are getting the recognizable and praise-able grades so that they can keep that extra sum of money they were offered. Ravitch claims that reformers want education to become more like business, governed by the same principles of competition, with compensation tied to results. She claims that merit pay has never improved achievement and proves this with a number of different claims.
Ravitch's evidence
Ravitch claims that teachers do not like the idea of non-educators (most reformers) redesigning the rules of their workplace. Teachers do not like merit pay because it destroys a healthy and collaborative school environment. Government programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top directly target teachers as the reason for student's failure. They also offer incentives to fire teachers whose students have lower test scores. In the 1980s, Richard Murnane and David Cohen surveyed the history of merit pay. In the few towns that had offered merit pay from 1918 to 1945, the interest in merit pay vastly declined and by 1953 only 4% of cities with a population over 30,000 offered merit pay. They also looked into piece-rate compensation, which also doesn't benefit the teacher or student. It encourages teachers to spend more time with students who will respond to their coaching and less to those who won't. Another issue that was found was that teachers would ignore subjects that were not being tested. The curriculum was being narrowed and the student's overall education experience was dwindling. Many other issues arise with merit pay according to Ravitch. Many teachers who received low scores responded by working less harder as opposed to working harder. Another issue was honest distribution of merit pay. Were principles handing out merit pay to their favorites? or to the teachers that actually deserved it? Overall merit pay is demoralizing, and cannot reasonably be administered fairly. Merit pay does not motivate teachers in Ravitch's investigation, instead it caused resentment and dissension among teachers who did not get merit pay. It is not associated with student performance. Ravitch says, "the paradox of merit pay in education is that even if it did work, it would still fail . The more that teachers and schools are compelled to focus on raising test scores, the more likely they are to narrow the curriculum; the more likely that districts and schools will game the system to inflate scores; the more likely that there will be cheating; the more likely that teachers will seek to avoid low scoring students".
Notes
-education as a business
-promotes competition and compensation results from that competition
-unions are a threat to this idea
-teachers don't like merit pay, it is degrading and demoralizing for them (discouraging)
-destroys the balance they strive for in a school, intertwined curriculum, collab.
-Murnane/Cohen research in 1980s
-no solution to problem of how to motivate teachers
-piece rate compensation---> only focuses on kids who will succeed, manufactures jobs NOT education
-narrows curriculum so only subjects that are being tested are taught or focused on
-Old style merit pay: fairness of merit...are principles being honest about distributing bonuses?
-found that teachers try less hard when rated poorly or do not receive merit pay
-Merit pay is not motivating, they work as hard as they can. they don't need an incentive to be motivated. wrong identification of problem
-government programs encourage incentives
-overall merit pay had no effect on students (the most important part of the issue)
Why important for RIDE?
The sole importance of school and academia is the student and his/her success. If teachers are competing for money, narrowing the curriculum, and ultimately focusing on themselves, it seems as if the child is losing in more ways than one. They have a distracted teacher who wants to win, they are missing out on valuable knowledge because their teacher wants them to score better on specific subject areas, the school environment becomes extremely stressful for teacher and student now that there are high stakes involved. There is no way that merit pay can be a part of the Rhode Island Strategic Plan. With multiple cases failed, it seems like it would be a joke for anyone to ever propose merit pay in communities that are large, fast paced, and always changing. This chapter promotes the idea that merit pay cannot be a part of any states education plan. It offers no benefit to the student or teacher, the two most important parts of the educational system. If the student receives more negatives than positive benefits, why is it relentlessly being proposed in school districts?